I suspect it's been cut. Either that, or it's just meant to be a sort of "yeah, Moonhaven was always kinda fucked, between the swamp hag, incognito Red Wizard and Underdark entrance right next to the water source, not exactly safe for children." :P
Maybe once upon a time they were part of some sidequest connected to Ethel, the Red Wizard or the invading Sharrans, or maybe it was just atmosphere, who knows. /shurg
Eh. I haven't seen his dialogue since they apparently tweaked it, but I didn't find it that bad to begin with. There was a bit of a vibe in act 2 like "sorry you're hurt, didn't mean to lead you on, was just being nice" but thats life sometimes. /shurg
The RPGHorrorstory element... eh. I somewhat agree, mostly just in exactly how far along/established in his journey of magic he was. A young prodigy attracting Mystra's attention, and then ruining himself (and endangering others) in pursuit of more, is an interesting twist on the traditional exploration of a Wizard's hubris, the issue comes more from like "yeah, I didn't just attract Mystra's attention, I was a peer of Elminster and one of Mystra's Chosen" (conspicuous failure to mention the magical institutions of his home, EG, the Blackstaff, Vajra, Larael, etc., aside). TBH, just changing his interactions with Elminster to either double down on the implicit arrogance of assuming himself Elminster's peer, or have him be more of a fanboy, a la Karlach to Minsc and Jaheira, would've gone a long way.
You have okay options to play an ace/aro character, you have options to form close bonds with most of your companions without sex for sure. (Was pleasantly surprised that as horny as Karlach is, you have very clear options to set boundaries there and still have that relationship. ) And of course, you don't have to romance anyone, but can still raise their approval and earn their trust/friendship.
Admittedly though, there isn't really any representation from non-player characters, which is unfortunate.
What do you mean? If you enter Act 2 from the mountain pass, that probably breaks some Grymforge quests, but the underdark is very much still accessible.
There's a lot of griping about the third act, and yeah, I get it, it's incomplete and comparatively poorly optimized. But it's still really good. :P They clearly bit off more than they could chew with the City, that maybe they could've solved with another year or two of dev time. (Hopefully, will be solved in a Def Ed a year or two down the line.) That isn't necessarily dev time they had, though. Not without taking out a ton of loans (do you really want tencent to own more than 30%?) and risking ill-will with consumers and WotC. (The game was meant to come out over a year ago.)
They're all over Youtube. Especially the shorts. I've given up on trying to report them, at this point, it doesn't seem to make a difference. Started noticing them a month or two ago.
Seems legit, Norbyte is a name I recognize from Div modding days, doesn't surprise me that they've written some of the key scripts for BG3 stuff.
The new mod does at least credit Norbyte/fig/etc, essentially reposting their work with SEO and monetization is more than a little scummy, though. (I also don't know how to tell whether or not a mod is monetized, and if it's not I don't really care. But don't really have reason to disbelieve that particular claim. /shurg)
Possibly one of my favourite series, period. The first book is objectively hard to get into. (The writing is a little rougher than the later novels, and the in media res start + Erikson's... anthropological(?) approach to world building (where history and culture are complicated, everyone disagrees about everything, anyone who can tell you something about the world with certainty either refuses, or is lying) leaves you needing to work hard to understand what's going on while not being sure if the effort is worth it.)
And then book two shares almost no characters and takes place on an entirely different continent, only tangentially connecting to the main plot. :P But if you can get over the shock of that (and get through the first book to get here to begin with) Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice (books two and three) are genuine works of art, and the rest of the series is of similar quality.
All but one of those crashes happened before the second hotfix, and the most recent one was during a multiplayer session. It hasn't crashed at all since the third hotfix. In fairness though, I haven't tried Vulkan since the second hotfix; maybe for me now it doesn't crash either. :P Release weekend though DX11 was vastly better for me, although it did still crash 2-3 times.
No insights unfortunately, my PC has similar specs and similar issues. Performance is better on Vulkan, but it's so much more stable in DX11 (maybe ~4-5 total crashes over the last week and change, compared to the roughly 2-3 an hour I had in Vulkan) I've been playing it pretty much exclusively that way.
Sometimes you might want to (there are areas where you can't return to camp without leaving, and some of those areas you might not want/be able to leave before completing them), and you can be attacked in your camp, depending on decisions you make.
Generally though, yeah. If you feel like a scroll/potion/spell/resource/etc will help you in this fight, don't be shy about spending it. Just maybe don't go wandering too much, if you find yourself low on resources. :P
Other thing to note, is that combat will feel clunky before you hit level five. That's where you start getting your heavy hitting spells, buffs and abilities, making additional attacks per round, etc. It's hard to screw up a character in 5e (unless you're multiclassing, then there are some trap choices), but everyone will feel a little weak early on.
Dang, I wish I knew this. Be nice if they tweak this trigger to happen later as well, not sure how many people are resting before recruiting at least 2-3 companions.